


the fractions of probability

by rensshi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Chungking Express, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Past Relationship(s), set in the early 00's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-04 16:43:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21200852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rensshi/pseuds/rensshi
Summary: Maybe it’d be fine, that this thing Wonwoo feels every time he’s at the Midnight Express with a certain someone, will disappear. Or maybe not.(You can keep drifting towards the likelihood of something happening before it does, painted fresh with colours so vibrant it’s hard to not wonder.)





	the fractions of probability

**Author's Note:**

> this is written for the track Dinner and Diatribes!
> 
> there is a whole lot of allusions to the weather and rain that it should be a warning of itself lol. while this is based off of wong kar wai's chungking express which was released in '94, the events of this fic take place some time in the early 2000's which saw a nervous period in hong kong that has been referenced in the story. just like chungking express, any past relationship(s) here and the healing that comes with, is meant to be a catalyst to the story and characters' development. i wrote this in a flurry of me going THRU it (40% of my fluctuating emotions allocated for young takeshi kaneshiro)
> 
> thank you to s for encouraging me to write this, and also mars for showing total support for this idea because just a little bit of it goes a long way T_T and thank you most of all to the mods for their hard work! 
> 
> here is a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5XCVQxm3xj8okVCEs6k3k8?si=RHcBxj05RkWccbN5q-PC1g) with the chosen hozier track that helped me write this ✨

On the first week of July, a heavy rainstorm hits, apropos of nothing but clear skies for weeks. Wonwoo hears of the events that happen as the typhoon season begins to sweep over the city; in between schools and shops closing down for a few days, a static wave pulses through Kowloon, imploding when residents nearby report sounds of gunshots. Foreigners filling their shoe soles and linings of their jackets with cocaine get detained, denting the swift routine at the Chungking Mansions. 

And then as if someone’s touched a lake, normalcy ripples out again once the typhoon—level 2—slowly eases over. You can’t really trust the weather forecasts on TV, so Wonwoo brings his raincoat today for good reason.

His sleeves leave water dripping on the counter of his favorite restaurant when he raps his knuckles and calls for service at the takeout window. Vernon shoots up from where he’d been bent over cleaning up and his frightening grin disappears when he sees Wonwoo. He’s already preparing the ingredients spread out on the wrap. 

“You could look a little happier to see me,” Wonwoo offers, carefully wiping the little specks of raindrops on his glasses and returning the wry smile Vernon gives him.

“You need to tell Soonyoung to stop hogging the phone whenever he comes here. It’s concerning,” Vernon huffs, squeezing a generous amount of dressing onto the salad.

“He’s lonely,” Wonwoo tells him, shrugging.

“But it’s like, _ sad. _He has way too much time on his hands,” Vernon complains, frowning at the Chef's salad he’s wrapping up in foil. When he pushes the second lump of foil towards Wonwoo, he leans forward and asks, “So who’s the other one for?”

“Myself. I’m fucking starved,” Wonwoo promptly replies.

“You aren’t staying? Come on, it’s pouring.”

“That’s exactly why—I’ll head home,” Wonwoo calls out, waving goodbye as he turns on his heel to rush out again in the humid mist.

He runs straight into Junhui, sharp elbow knocking into Junhui’s waist. 

Junhui skids back, his t-shirt damp from Wonwoo’s clothes. “Are you leaving right away?” he asks, by way of greeting.

“Yeah, I’m going—” Wonwoo starts but the word dissolves in his mouth when Junhui stares at him expectantly, a gentle pull that roots him there.

“Did you hear what happened recently? With the drug bust? You should stay,” Junhui says seriously but there’s a hopeful cheery glint in his eyes, and Wonwoo snorts. Where Junhui and Wonwoo live in Central, is nowhere near where the drug bust happened. Over Junhui’s shoulder, Vernon’s expression is pinched, like he wants to laugh. Wonwoo’s not very good at saying no to Junhui, especially when he gets Wonwoo a bowl of _ ngau lam mein _ on the house. Junhui would sing softly to Leslie Cheung playing from the tiny stereo box while he puttered in and out of the kitchen. On some days, he was so tired he’d have his eyes closed, chin in his hand and the gentle heat of his shoulder pressing against Wonwoo’s.

Today, he wolfs down the extra Chef’s salad Wonwoo bought.

“Someone came by yesterday asking if you still were a regular here. Dressed in uniform,” Junhui tells him, gesturing with his hands motioning around his own head. “Flight attendant from Korean Air, her hair still up and all. She left a letter for you.”

Wonwoo has never been so grateful for how mind-numbingly good the beef tastes, tender and loaded with sauce. He goes into a short coughing fit, Junhui pushing a glass of water towards him before he chokes out, “Did you open it?”

“Why would I?”

“Vernon might,” Wonwoo says, shrugging.

“I’m a decent man,” Junhui proclaims, hand over his heart.

When Wonwoo tears open the envelope at home, the spare set of keys that Wonwoo had given Kyungwon during their relationship, falls out with a tinkling clang. 

The letter itself, written in a shaky loopy hand feels long overdue. It’s a short letter, but Wonwoo reads through it over and over. Kyungwon had written it in between flights probably, the view of a runway behind her through towering glass windows of an airport Wonwoo has never been to: _ Here are the keys, I’m sorry I don’t have time to drop by properly, _among other things said that sieve into the quiet hum of the fridge, the subliminal lull of bubbles from the fish tank in his living room. 

Wonwoo keeps the keys in a drawer, stuffs the letter back in the envelope to discard. He presses play on his stereo, not switching out the CD inside, and starts cleaning up his apartment unit again.

The Midnight Express used to be a snack bar until Junhui’s family, the same uncle who’d opened up the karaoke bar that Vernon liked to go all out at, bought it a few years ago and turned it into a proper restaurant. Soonyoung, who had been frequenting the place for a long time, mourned the renovations right up until finding out that in addition to keeping the house specials of Chef’s salad and their fish and chips, there were other things that helped ease over the hesitance that came with change. Soonyoung brought Wonwoo over for his first time to taste the claypot rice and _ ngau lam mein _and saw no reason to complain anymore—you’d hear a choir singing from eating the first spoonful of it after a long day. 

Junhui hears a lot about the customers’ long days, and Wonwoo’s story about his breakup wasn’t new to him.

“So what’s wrong with home?” Junhui still asked, the third time Wonwoo showed up alone and Junhui happened to be running the register himself when he wasn’t involved in any of Chan’s projects. A few passing conversations after Chan had introduced Wonwoo to Junhui, that crew member from his production team whose family owned the Midnight Express, was all Wonwoo needed to know that Junhui is more perceptive than he lets on.

“It’s just uh, really messy,” Wonwoo answered. He wasn't trying to be funny. 

Junhui didn’t say anything then, blank as he always looks balancing a smoke in between his fingers while he dug around his pockets for his lighter. He lit the cigarette that Wonwoo had fished out from his own pack, the shared ember of the flame searing bright against the indigo and black streets outside.

Wonwoo received a CD from Junhui the next time he dropped by during the day. Junhui laughed at Wonwoo staring at The Cranberries on the cover. “For when you’re cleaning up the mess. Take care of yourself, Wonwoo,” Junhui exclaimed, waving Wonwoo off when he shook his head at Junhui in disbelief. The next time, it was a title by Dinah Washington.

Three years of being in a relationship makes you realize something when most of the mess is yours. Kyungwon’s things that were still there only filled up the size of a small box.

“You know what? I’m proud of you. You picked yourself up just fine.” Soonyoung hiccups in a small bar, the weak sparkle of disco lights from the jukebox floating around the room and over their glasses as Junior Murvin’s timeless voice fills the spaces. Wonwoo signals to the bartender for the tab and takes out his wallet. It’s the least he can do for Soonyoung, fresh from a broken heart and raw from too many glasses of whiskey.

“Maybe it helps that I knew she knew. That it wasn’t meant to last,” Wonwoo admits and Soonyoung sniffles next to him, nodding. Outside, the rain has let up, water rivulets no longer sliding heavy down the glass pane. People still walk swiftly in their raincoats and umbrellas, splashing through puddles of bright blues and reds from the neon signage.

“When you’re feeling better, just uh, clean up,” Wonwoo tells him Soonyoung, and trying not to smile while he holds him steady as they step out. Soonyoung just shoots him a dark look and mutters something about _ house exorcism _ and _ too many Chef’s salads. _

House exorcism becomes a sort of a joke now; Wonwoo tells Soonyoung to do it so he can stop moping, Soonyoung threatens to exorcise the part of Wonwoo that is his humour when they’re out eating at the restaurant. Vernon wonders out loud whether or not that’d work on Soonyoung because he’s practically an atheist, Junhui perks up as he’s bringing out their meals when he overhears that bit of the conversation.

“Your house needs cleansing? I know a guy who can do that,” Junhui supplies and Wonwoo snickers at Soonyoung’s expression.

Junhui’s hardly around these days due to another independent film project Chan and Minghao have pulled him in for to be another writer for _Love You For 10,000 Years._ It’s a simple, if not familiar story, about a university professor who falls in love with his student in graduate school. She helps him leave his ghosts behind in the form of his divorce with his ex-wife.

“Don’t you want to know whether or not they get together?” Junhui asks, as Wonwoo takes the seat next to him at the island counter. Wonwoo’s apartment being clean now, with the furniture rearranged, was jarring even though he’d made the change himself one weekend pushing around his pieces of furniture and wiping them down. With Junhui sitting here beside him, taking up space on the kitchen stools and his couch every now and then, home was different. Like Junhui had brought in something with him, breathing warmth into the yellowing walls and saturating the dullness with his quiet voice and easy company. Junhui’s habit of leaning in when he talks, like he’s got secrets folded under his tongue and close enough to be able to smell his cologne past the thin layer of familiar kitchen smoke still on his shirt sometimes, makes Wonwoo shift backwards like a weird fight or flight response.

“Whether or not they do, is it a happy ending?” Wonwoo asks. 

“Depends on how you look at it,” Junhui says, grinning.

“Goodnight, Wen Junhui,” Wonwoo deadpans, sweeps his hand towards the door in feigned annoyance.

Wonwoo's birthday passes quietly amid a noisy dinner that Soonyoung and their other colleagues fill the table with at a hotpot place near the university. He doesn't check his phone at home for voicemails until the next morning; after a series of them from a couple of friends, and his parents, there's Junhui's pleasant voice wishing him a happy birthday.

In a perfect world, people who are supposed to fall in love will always keep meeting by chance. Junhui is a romantic, so Wonwoo isn’t surprised that he isn’t too critical of the movie script when Junhui tells him about it. Besides, he doesn't disagree; he met Kyungwon by chance too in a bar before she'd taken up the flight attendant job and moved back to Korea.

“But you can keep meeting and running into someone by chance and never feel the same way they do,” Wonwoo says, shifting in his seat to let loose the cricks in his back after a long day of writing papers. Behind him, Vernon nearly knocks over a glass of water still half full while he’s cleaning up a table.

“That’s true. But I don’t think it’s the frequency that counts.” Junhui hasn’t started drinking his cup of hot tea, although he’s got his hand constantly curled around the cup. Neither has Wonwoo. “It’s more like—how you keep running into each other that counts, I guess. From there, you just start to notice things." 

There’s a clear difference between probability and chance. Like how you can keep drifting towards the likelihood of something happening before it does, painted fresh with colours so vibrant it’s hard to not wonder. And then chance just means that the probability is so low that you’d have to look back to see where you bulldozed through everything blindly if you missed it.

In other words, it’s like the weather; the typhoon season lets out a soft drizzle this evening, with the probability of heavier rain throughout the week that’s already washing over the old concrete rooftops and asphalt.

The patter of rain is still light and non-threatening outside. Across the round table, Junhui reads through a part of his copy of the script again and flips through fresh photographs of the location taken by Minghao, his lashes fluttering and brow gently furrowed in concentration and fingers itching for a cigarette that he doesn’t want to smoke indoors. Wonwoo refills Junhui’s empty cup of tea for him.

“Wow. You look like—”

“Shit? No kidding. Just this week I found out I can fall asleep while standing after all,” Junhui mutters, and presses his forehead against the door of the chiller before getting a Coke bottle. The lemon yellow undertone of the corner store’s lights overhead only accentuates the dark circles under Junhui’s eyes. Wonwoo can see where he's missed shaving. Shooting for Chan’s film started a month ago, and Wonwoo feels bad for Junhui and the whole crew; it would have been done faster if one of the leads hadn't gotten sick and another typhoon hadn’t hit smack in the middle of September after Shuhua's recovery.

“I was about to say you look fine,” Wonwoo assures with a grin, and he fully expects Junhui to say something sly to affirm that he is perfectly aware of his good looks. 

Junhui just looks at him straight in the eye, like he’s contemplating something serious. “Well so do you,” Junhui responds, carrying another Coke bottle in the other hand. Wonwoo’s just wearing track pants and a white shirt, sweat marks faint after jogging.

After he pays for them both and when they’ve stepped out onto the sidewalk outside, he holds out the unopened bottle for Wonwoo.

“Please take it. You’re one of my favourite customers that I won’t be seeing for a week,” Junhui laughs, eyes glinting.

“Oh I’m wishing it didn’t have to be a week,” Wonwoo says, smiling but to his point, he was being honest. The seminar he’d have to attend would only take three days, but he’d made promises to people about seeing them this time when he flies back to Korea.

“By the way, you’re always welcome to visit,” Wonwoo reminds Junhui, who jumps a little, weary with fatigue when Wonwoo claps him on the shoulder.

“Right, okay,” Junhui says softly, nodding.

For once, there’s no rain tonight.

Wonwoo probably got so used to the milder temperatures of Hong Kong that Korea is a whole lot colder than he remembered it being in the fall. He’s already finished most of his coffee on the way to the barbecue restaurant that he’s supposed to go to for lunch, hands savouring the leftover warmth.

At the barbecue place, Jeonghan fills him in on all he’s missed and what people who used to run their college circles have been up to, the usual charming way of bringing him up to speed in the most efficient way possible by telling him things he only needs to know—there’s Seungcheol set on moving to America by next year with his family, and Mingyu passing his pilot exams.

“I didn’t know by the way, that you and Kyungwon—well—I’m sorry,” Jeonghan says, watching him and Wonwoo shakes his head. 

“It’s okay, hyung,” Wonwoo assures, the title feeling a bit strange in his mouth after not needing to call anyone that for so long.

“Mingyu told me the gist of it pretty recently when we saw each other.” Jeonghan hesitates, turning over the meat on the grill calmly. “How did your parents react?”

Wonwoo smiles wryly. “They were disappointed at first, as expected.” Wonwoo still thinks a part of them might always be and it's worse that way.

The decent thing to be said about the whole ordeal was that, Wonwoo, brought up with practicality and good sense, had really thought it through instead of buying the engagement ring on impulse. It used to his make throat tight, a painful hollowness in his gut stirring when he remembers that Kyungwon had even said thank you. For being honest and not making her go through something he couldn’t really do, even if he was sure he'd been in love once.

“My parents joke to me about how my brother might find a wife first before I hit my thirties. But I think they’re just thankful as well, that I made the decision for myself,” Wonwoo explains, in between bites of his food.

Jeonghan smiles at him, signature curl to the corner of his mouth. “Well thank God then.”

“What about you, hyung? Are you still going to Europe?” Jeonghan was planning for it before, purely business-related so he was only mentioning things that flew over Wonwoo’s head, like sales management, tax differences and hard-to-pronounce French restaurants that needed the wine his company was selling. 

“Yeah. Work aside, I think it’ll be good for me,” Jeonghan says, squinting through the steam to look closer at the meat being cooked. “I get it now, why you left to Hong Kong, why you needed the change,” he adds, more quietly.

Wonwoo frowns, not liking the implication of the words and what Jeonghan still might think of it. “It’s—” he starts, then stops. After all these years, Wonwoo still feels like he can never say what he means.

“I never thought you were running away. Not from who you are." 

_Or us_. Before Kyungwon, there was, for a brief period, Jeonghan. They'd been in college then, and too young to be able to deal with feelings that were supposedly wrong.

Between them, the smoke is thin, moksal finally browning because it’s Jeonghan’s favourite kind of pork cut and he grills it last _ all _the time like some kind of ritual to his barbecue cooking. 

"Well, sometimes trying to be honest still feels like—" Wonwoo searches for the words. "Like running from something either way," he finishes.

It still makes Wonwoo's mouth dry, the reminder leaving a kind of hollowness in his ribs when Jeonghan murmurs, "You can't help who you like. Besides, I think you’re doing fine.” It’s the soothing quality to Jeonghan that Wonwoo used to like so much, albeit the tone sounding different than how he remembered.

There are a lot of things now that are different.

Wonwoo curls and uncurls his hand under the table. Thinks about the flame of a lighter that he always shares, comforting against the moody tinted backdrop of neon signs in Cantonese, the echo of music from a CD he’s been given that he’s played over and over again in his apartment back in Hong Kong after he comes back from class. The question between probability and chance is there somewhere.

Maybe it’d be fine like this, that this thing that Wonwoo feels when he’s back in the Midnight Express listening to a certain someone humming along to Leslie Cheung, will come and go like smoke dissolving.

Except watching things go up in smoke felt wrong too.

“Yeah. A friend of mine tells me that all the time, just indirectly,” Wonwoo says, smiling. 

Jeonghan nods, smirk settling on his face. “Good friend then.”

The entirety of Lan Kwai Fong and the narrow shortcuts weaving between the food stalls, shops and closed bars during the day plunges Wonwoo back into a bustling current of reality after he gets back.

“Do you ever think about trying to date again?” Vernon asks innocently out of the blue as he’s giving Wonwoo back his change. “You’re a good guy, not bad-looking, you’ve got a decent job as a teacher’s assistant and you sound like you’ve got big plans since you’re still furthering your studies,” he starts listing it down. That’s pretty much the end of the list, as Vernon stares at Wonwoo expectantly for a reaction, wiping his hands down his apron.

“Okay so those things justify being a good catch like how?”

“I dunno. I spend way too much time listening to Junhui’s uncles and aunts gossiping,” Vernon says. 

“What about my uncles and aunts gossiping?” Junhui appears from out the back, prodding Vernon in the waist so he doubles over and whines. 

“Hi,” Junhui says to Wonwoo, arms hanging limp by his side instead of carrying things like he always seems to be doing. “You’re uh, back.”

“I did say just a week,” Wonwoo supplies, a little confused. He catches Vernon looking back and forth between them, and Wonwoo suddenly feels a little self-conscious, but not enough to look away from Junhui’s smile. Junhui opens his mouth again to say something, when he’s distracted by a loud group of foreigners coming in, obviously from a bar with their British accents a little slurred. Wonwoo waits for his food at his usual table near the window.

The likelihood of Junhui coming over becomes less when he’s at the Midnight Express more regularly now on weeknights with filming being over when he can take off his freelance hat.

Instead Junhui visits on Saturdays, the lethargy of the mid afternoons reverberating from the walls as if it's alive too along the quiet whir of the electric fan in Wonwoo’s small living room. The whispering sunlight filters through clouds and the grille windows, spills over the floors and Junhui’s legs in parallel, shadows on his face only making his features look sharper every time he comes into the stormy gray light of the kitchen to watch Wonwoo dig around for food. Even with the thin layer of dust on the wall mirror in the living room that settles quickly after Wonwoo bothers to wipe it down, their own reflections opposite are rinsed with the hushed peaceful aftermath of a late afternoon rain shower. 

Junhui leaves a lot of things behind that brands itself tacit at the back of Wonwoo’s mind—tiny crumpled receipts here and there that fall out from his jacket, fish food still left out next to the tank, pairs of cleaned chopsticks and mugs moved from the cupboards to the dinnerware rack now that they’re used again more often.

Soonyoung doesn’t notice these little things when he comes over of course, but he feels it. “I sense good spirits here,” Soonyoung whispers dramatically, to which Wonwoo rolls his eyes at.

"I've been seeing you too often a time," Wonwoo jokes, just as Junhui rounds the crackers aisle almost runs smack dab into Wonwoo at the corner store again.

"If you have complaints with it, _you _can stop dropping by for your Chef's salad. No, please don't," Junhui adds quickly when Wonwoo raises an eyebrow. "You'll just have to blame it on chance if we keep running into each other."

"Is that what this is? Just chance?" Wonwoo asks, and Junhui looks away for a moment, stuffs his hand in the pocket of his jacket. 

"You're right. It's just a matter of probability," Junhui responds, flashing a grin.

Wonwoo doesn't know what to do with his hands since he's already gotten his bottle of orange juice. He can smell Junhui’s cologne from where he’s standing, peering over his shoulder and watching Junhui struggle between the choices at the canned fruits section.

“So Vernon asked me if I was interested in dating,” Junhui tells Wonwoo suddenly, inspecting a can of pineapples way too keenly.

“What? Dating him?” Junhui shoots him a bewildered look but Wonwoo laughs because it's a stronger reaction than when Vernon himself described men Junhui might like. “Okay, seriously so what d’you say?”

“I asked him if he had anybody in mind for me instead,” Junhui replies. Wonwoo thinks it’s supposed to be funny since Vernon's range of choices seemed to be limited by availability, age and occupation, which meant overstating the phrase 'plenty of fish in the sea'.

Junhui isn’t really laughing though. If Wonwoo wasn’t trying to search Junhui’s face for answers, he would have missed the flush creeping up Junhui’s neck.

Kyungwon calls him up one day from the airport while she’s on break from a layover flight, its stop at Hong Kong. Wonwoo hears the familiar mull of static and faraway conversations through the phone, louder and busier at this time of the year when tourists scramble to travel on their discount flights. 

“About the stuff I left there, you can throw them out or give them away,” she says, her voice hoarse. She’d always get sick in between long-haul flights. “I hope you’re doing well,” she says, just a touch awkward but well-meaning.

“I am.” Wonwoo wants to ask if she’s alright when she coughs on the phone, but he doesn’t. Kyungwon’s stubbornness, still admirable and exasperating in the past, will always be stronger than whatever she’s coming down with. “I hope you’re doing good too,” he says.

There’s silence for just a beat, but Kyungwon’s response feels sincere when she says thank you and wishes him well.

_Love You For 10,000 Years_ gets talk stirring in the local film communities while it's still showing in the smaller theatres for a short period of time. Junhui goes to watch it with Wonwoo and Soonyoung even though he doesn't have to and Wonwoo finds out that the professor and the graduate student don’t actually get together because it’s been one-sided all along. The focal point was the professor, his ex-wife and the mess that was left behind by their divorce.

“Is this depressing you?” Junhui asks, turning to look at Wonwoo in the dark. 

“If he doesn't cry, will you get offended? You did help write the story,” Soonyoung points out. Wonwoo grunts beside him.

Wonwoo doesn’t cry right there like Soonyoung actually does, but the cuts and use of wide shots do a lot to elevate the mood. He finally sees Yanan in character and he understands now why Chan had been so adamant in getting him to star in this project. There’s the rooftop of a dilapidated building, made gentler and softer by the post-production, and two characters sitting next to each other, a shared sense of separation between them as the scene fades out.

It's most likely the last film Junhui will work on seeing as Chan moved back to Korea to continue studying there. Minghao still has his photography studio up and running. If it had been years ago, when the film industry was at its best and titles in the Hong Kong Film Awards always got international critics talking, maybe he and Junhui would have jumped into film head-deep and heart-first.

"Minghao jokes all the time about being born in the wrong period," Junhui says.

Now they couldn’t see a store that wasn’t selling pirated movies everywhere. Just a few weeks ago, another cinema theater closed down at Central. Besides the constant grim health hazards from the crossing flu outbreak on the news, Soonyoung took one look at the newspapers' headlines the other day and said "Ah, everything's just going to shit, isn't it?" at the market prices hiking up.

“My mom was an artist. She took on the business of running a food stall when she was young but I always thought of her as an artist growing up,” Junhui had told Wonwoo once. “She liked it better that way, I guess. That way she gets to keep what she loves, instead of losing it to something else.”

That night, Wonwoo can’t sleep. He thinks, with dry silent humour, that it’s all due to ghosts. Except it’s the film that haunts him.

There are a lot of things Wonwoo wants to say, Junhui next to him taking out his lighter. The silence between them sifts like grains of sand in the evening.

“There's this line that I just keep thinking of from the movie that's said between the divorced couple,” Wonwoo brings up, the smoke curling from his mouth.

“Which one?”

_ I think we both deserve to live our lives, don’t we?_

Junhui bites his bottom lip, and there’s a flash of something like loss and yearning, that passes over his face. Wonwoo won’t even be able to get to a point where he can buy an engagement ring with this and the notion makes his stomach flip over, sick. Just watching the cigarette smoke unfurl and disappear right in front of him somehow feels worse.

"So what about this, Wonwoo?" Junhui asks, quiet enough that if Vernon had been blasting music behind them from the takeout counter, he probably wouldn't have heard. 

If Wonwoo closes his eyes and really listens, he can hear the speed and steadiness of Junhui’s breathing. It matches his own.

It isn’t chance that Junhui comes to Wonwoo by the end of the week, when the city's vibrant storm of people on the streets begins to ease after the evening rush. Like the way Junhui seems to bring in _ something _with him whenever he steps inside—a crackle, shimmering and warm like gentle fire that Wonwoo knows he’s already made space for, the pieces of his heart shifting.

“If I’m not your most favourite customer by now, I’ll be disappointed,” Wonwoo says, his pulse thundering by now when Junhui steps closer towards him. 

Junhui’s laugh is fond. “I’m disappointed you think I’d do this to just a customer.”

“Well it’d be nice if you do _ something _,” Wonwoo says, a rough edge to his own voice now that makes Junhui grow serious. Wonwoo contemplates where to touch him first—jaw, neck, a gentle trace over his mouth.

Junhui thinks the same thing when he leans in, fingers on Wonwoo’s cheek. Permission that Wonwoo gives, when he kisses Junhui. He presses his mouth to Junhui’s jaw, down to his neck when Junhui doesn’t move.

They keep kissing, Junhui stumbling into the side of a table as he's walking backwards and Wonwoo laughs into his mouth.

"Tell me if you want to stop," Wonwoo says, when they reach the doorway to his bedroom.

"Don’t want to. I might regret it forever if I do," Junhui confesses, his lips catching Wonwoo’s as he speaks and the words are all it takes to make Wonwoo feel like he's gut-punched with the need for this; the headiness of the taste of Junhui’s skin, mild salt along the base off his throat and gentle cologne when he inhales.

Wonwoo takes in the bloom and shudder of Junhui’s chest, his face flushed pretty when he grips the shallow curve of Wonwoo’s waist after Wonwoo pulls off their clothes. A muted kind of sweetness even when Junhui’s scraping his teeth against Wonwoo’s shoulder and saying his name over and over as Wonwoo touches Junhui where he needs it the most.

Junhui asks him how he wants it instead, hands trailing down Wonwoo’s bare thigh while Wonwoo tries to think through the haze of it, the want thick in his mouth when Junhui kisses him, sure and firm.

“Just like this,” Wonwoo manages to say, lowering himself down on his elbows. 

“Are you sure?” When he turns, Junhui’s eyes are glittering, half-lidded. He's still painfully handsome in the ghostly dim light.

“Yes." 

Junhui does everything carefully the way Wonwoo expects him to—not a letdown, because once Wonwoo gets used to Junhui’s fingers, him sliding into Wonwoo is sheer burning relief. Wonwoo’s hand instinctively grabs at Junhui’s wrist where Junhui’s held him by his hips, and he sighs into the pillow, biting his lip and groaning into it as Junhui fucks into him in slow strokes, learning how Wonwoo likes it.

“Jun, can I”—Wonwoo gasps, the words swallowed down in pleasure when Junhui angles himself differently. "I wanna—fuck, I'm not sure how to say it," Wonwoo breathes, laughing a little. It's been a long time since he's done something like this and god—for all his fluency, his Cantonese vocabulary definitely doesn't cover it. 

"You can try to tell me. Or show me," Junhui murmurs, just shy of breathless.

Junhui slips out of Wonwoo carefully when Wonwoo asks him to, drags his fingers down the knobs of Wonwoo's spine. Something constricts in his chest when Junhui kisses his shoulder. Because there’s still the sweetness of it that he tastes in Junhui’s mouth, something close to permanence building that Wonwoo might compare against anyone else who might come after Junhui. The thought of it might hang painfully, suspended in the air the next morning, when the uncertainty of everything will settle.

But for now, all he knows is the way Junhui seems to like it, humming when Wonwoo slips his thumb in Junhui's mouth to press over his tongue and out again to trace over his lips, bitten and plush. How Junhui's breathing stutters when Wonwoo's rubbing against the head of his cock as he lines himself up over Junhui.

Wonwoo sinks down and this time it’s Junhui who moans his name beneath him, a gentle plea for him to start moving, so Wonwoo does. There’s sweat running down Wonwoo’s back that should have been cooled from the night breeze through the windows if the curtains weren’t drawn tight, but the heaviness of the heat between their skin only makes him move faster, no matter how much he really wants to drag this out and make this last.

He comes by the time Junhui’s saying a broken version of his name, muscles tight and electricity fizzling out under his bones.

Wonwoo wakes up to his window peppered with raindrops and the morning light illuminating the dull green curtains in an eerie wash, the things in his room haloed and soft. He hears the light rain outside. And then Faye Wong's lilting voiceplaying from his CD player, turned down so low that Wonwoo thinks at first, that he might still be asleep and dreaming, until the aches in his body convince him otherwise.

Beside him, Junhui is clothed—he has on the shirt from the night before. He must have woken up too early, tinkered around the place and left the stereo on before he fell asleep again. Wonwoo hadn’t thought about the chances of him leaving in the morning. Either way, he's glad Junhui stayed. 

He kisses Junhui below the ear, light enough that he stirs from the tickle but doesn’t wake, and gets up for the day. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos appreciated! hmu on my [twitter](https://twitter.com/fractalkiss) or [cc](https://curiouscat.me/fractalkiss) if u wanna yell at me about stuff


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